Deadfall

Deadfall by Linda Fairstein

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

This author is clearly a member of the school which believes an author should throw everything short of the kitchen sink at her main character and see if the protagonist can rise above the challenges thereby growing as an individual and providing a fine character arc. I'm not a member of that school either as a writer or reader. Of the first 100 pages of this book it seems about 80 are the main character whining about this or that personal problem. I came close to DNFing it several times. However I was glad I stuck it out because somewhere after page 100 and definitely by 150, it occurred to Ms. Fairstein, if one is going to be a writer, it's probably a good idea to tell a story at some point and she settled into a pretty good plot. True, one had to wade through a number of environmental lectures but the plot was strong enough so I could get through them.

If you believe character development is the most important part of writing - and many do these days - and if you like reading about environmental issues then I highly recommend this book. Even as a detective story it's not bad.

I did have to chuckle at one point. She has one character warn another about possibly being politically incorrect in what the character is saying. It seems to me it's not the characters so much as Ms. Fairstein who's running scared of cancel culture, and as someone who appears to make a living through writing, I guess she's absolutely correct. Publishers, and by extension authors, live in fear of a social media mob decrying their work. Still, if even the most innocuous comment requires what amounts to a trigger warning we're in sad shape as a society.

Once past the first hundred pages I enjoyed the book, but although good, it wasn't great. I will not set out to deliberately avoid reading books by this author but I certainly won't seek them out. I think probably 65% of readers will enjoy this book, but the remainder, those who don't like characters constantly whining and those who don't feel the need for an author to preach environmentalism to them might best take a pass.



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